With thanks to Zoltán Szász, whose login-form report started our sweep for removed Joomla 3 calls across the template range, and to Michael Mullan, whose Expression bug report led to the maintenance pass that several of the fixes below came from.

Added

Bootstrap 5 compatibility layer

• New css/bs2-bs5-bridge.css: maps Aeon’s Bootstrap 2 classes onto Joomla 5’s bundled Bootstrap 5: .row-fluid, .span1–.span12 and offsets, .pull-left / .pull-right, .hidden-phone / .visible-phone, Bootstrap 2 button classes such as .btn-inverse, and the modal shell.
• It also carries Aeon-specific rules: the fixed header bar (.navbar-fixed-top) keeps its Bootstrap 2 position and full width, VirtueMart’s own five-across product tiles (.span2.sp20) keep their widths and gutters, and the social links show only the new icon (the old social-sprite.png background is switched off where an icon is present).
• It is emitted as the last stylesheet in the head, with a file-time version marker, so it sits in the right place in the cascade.
• index.php now loads Joomla’s Bootstrap 5 stylesheet (/media/vendor/bootstrap/css/bootstrap.min.css, plus bootstrap.rtl.min.css on right-to-left sites), which the Bootstrap 5 rows and columns of the main layout need.
• New js/cs-jq-compat.js: restores four jQuery 1.x calls that Joomla 5’s jQuery 3 removed but the bundled slideshow (camera.js) and other bundled scripts still use: $.browser, .live(), .offset() on the window, and .load(fn) as a load-event shortcut.

Phone layout

• New js/cs-mobile-generic.js: on phones (up to 767 px) a 56×56 px menu button sits in the logo row and opens a slide-in drawer built from the main menu, with sub-menus that expand in place.
• A phone toolbar centred under the header with five 44×44 px buttons: the second menu (the sidebar menu module, or the main menu’s top level on pages that have none), Log in, Register, Search and Follow us (the social links).
• Search opens a full-width panel with a 44 px field, 16 px text (so iPhones do not zoom the page when you tap into it) and a submit button with a magnifier icon.
• The header puts the logo and menu button first, with the currency selector and the cart on their own row beneath, both centred. The previous phone header showed the cart and currency selector at the top and pulled the logo up into that bar (#site-name-handler at top:-71px).
• The cart drop-down opens centred on the screen just below the header, up to 340 px wide, instead of hanging off the right edge of the cart button.
• Module areas use a 10 px side margin on phones instead of the desktop’s 30 px gutter (#bootmod3, #bot-modules3, #main-module-handler-a3; #content-handler3 has none). The breadcrumb band (#brcr, which carries the demo’s “3 Easy Steps” banner) had a 30 px left margin and no right margin; it now has 10 px each side, so the banner no longer runs off the right edge.
• The toolbar, drawer and menu button are hidden from 768 px up, and the header reorder reverts there by itself.

Colour picker

• New custom field fields/colorpicker.php with the bundled Coloris picker (js/coloris.min.js, css/coloris.min.css). All 110 colour settings are now type="colorpicker" (for example bodybackground, bodytextcolor, CameraABG, RestopmenuHlinksColor), with a live swatch and a picker that ships with the template.
• New fields/adminui.php: styles the Options screen, lets help banners run the full width of the form, and makes the template’s Details panel follow Joomla’s light or dark admin theme.

Favicon tool

• New Favicon tab (fieldset faviconsettings) with a media field (favicon) and a crop tool (fields/favicontool.php) that cuts a square from the chosen image and saves it through Joomla’s media manager. With thanks to Gianluca, whose favicon question inspired this tool.
• index.php builds the favicon set from that image: a .ico (16, 32 and 48 px), 32, 192 and 512 px PNGs and a 180 px Apple touch icon, cached in images/favicon-generated/, and a copy of the .ico at the site root. An .ico or .svg is used as it is. With the field left empty, the template’s own favicon.ico is used. Two new helpers do the work: phFaviconSet() and phIcoBytes().
• 10 new language strings in en-GB.tpl_aeon.ini (72 → 82), e.g. TPL_AEON_FAVICON_TAB, TPL_AEON_FAVICON_LABEL, TPL_AEON_FAVICONTOOL_CREATE.

Modern social network support

• Eight new social services, each with an on/off switch and a URL field: Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Discord (fields instagram/instagramON … discord/discordON). With X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Vimeo and RSS that makes 13.
• The social links draw Font Awesome 6 brand icons (fab fa-*, fas fa-rss), centred in their circles and each with a screen-reader label, instead of the social-sprite.png picture. Twitter is now X (“X (formerly Twitter)”, fa-x-twitter); its setting keeps the field name twitter, so an existing URL carries over.

Security helpers

• Three helper functions at the top of index.php, each declared inside function_exists(): phEsc() (HTML escaping), phHexColor() and phCssDim() (lets through only a CSS length). Details under Security.

Changed

Joomla 5 platform

• Built for Joomla 5.4.7; the Quickstart bundles VirtueMart 4.6.8.
• index.php starts with the defined('_JEXEC') or die; direct-access guard (the previous one had none) and imports the Joomla 4+ classes it uses (Factory, Text, Route, ModuleHelper and others).
• The main layout uses Bootstrap 5 classes: in index.php, row-fluid 15 → 2 (the two left are style selectors for VirtueMart’s category view) and spanN 54 → 7, with 13 .row and 47 col-md-N classes. The column widths that index.php works out from how many modules are published (the two top module rows, the two bottom rows, top-a, bottom-a and the main content column) are now col-md-N values. The slideshow column and the footer’s left/right halves still emit spanN and are laid out by the bridge.
• templateDetails.xml version 18.08.2025 5.3.0/4.4.4 → 5.4.7, creation date 09/09/2022/ → 2026-08-11; method="upgrade" kept, so an existing install updates in place. The Details panel shows 5.4.7 (2026-08-11), and index.php carries the same @version header.

J3 → J5 API migration

• 195 of the 196 Joomla 3 static calls replaced: JRoute / JROUTE 60, JHtml / JHTML 56, JText 37, JFactory 21, JURI 9, JModuleHelper 4, JPluginHelper 4, JComponentHelper 2, JDocumentHTML 1 and JError 1, now Route, HTMLHelper, Text, Factory, Uri, ModuleHelper and so on. The jimport() call in index.php is gone. These aliases exist only while Joomla’s Behaviour – Backward Compatibility plugin is enabled, and not at all in Joomla 6.
• Files converted (calls before → after):
  • index.php 9 → 0, error.php 13 → 0, component.php 1 → 0.
  • html/mod_login/default.php 20 → 0, default_logout.php 6 → 0.
  • html/com_virtuemart/productdetails/default.php 18 → 0, plus default_images.php 4, default_reviews.php 4, default_addtocart.php 3, default_customfields.php 1, default_showcategory.php 1 → 0.
  • html/com_virtuemart/user/login.php 15 → 1 (its JDispatcher event call remained), edit_address.php 6, bs3-edit_address.php 5, bs3-edit_vendor.php 4, edit.php 3, bs3-edit.php 3, edit_orderlist.php 3, mail_raw_regvendor.php 3, edit_vendor.php 2, bs3-edit_shopper.php 1, bs3-edit_address_userfields.php 1, mail_html_reguser.php 1, mail_raw_reguser.php 1 → 0.
  • html/mod_virtuemart_product/single.php 12 → 0, default.php 6 → 0.
  • html/com_virtuemart/virtuemart/default_products.php 6 → 0, default.php 1, default_categories.php 1 → 0.
  • html/com_virtuemart/category/default.php 6 → 0, categories.php 1 → 0.
  • html/com_virtuemart/cart/default_shopperform.php 6 → 0, default_pricelist.php 5, default_coupon.php 1 → 0.
  • html/com_virtuemart/askquestion/form.php 3, bs3-form.php 3, mail_html_question.php 2 → 0.
  • html/mod_articles_latest/default_items.php 6 → 0; html/mod_menu/default.php, html/mod_virtuemart_currencies/default.php and html/mod_virtuemart_manufacturer/default.php 2 each; html/mod_breadcrumbs/default.php, html/mod_search/default.php and html/mod_virtuemart_cart/default.php 1 each → 0.
• The Joomla 3 behavior.formvalidation call in the VirtueMart login override (html/com_virtuemart/user/login.php) is now the Joomla 5 behavior.formvalidator; Joomla 5 stops with “behavior::formvalidation not found” on the old name. With thanks to Zoltán Szász, whose report found it.
• The error page creates its 404 with new \Exception(…, 404) instead of JError::raiseWarning(), which has no alias in Joomla 5 at all, and uses Text::_() for its 12 strings.
• In all, 41 of the 80 PHP overrides under html/ were modified.

Login dialog

• The login window is a Bootstrap 5 modal, centred on the screen (.modal-dialog-centered), opened with data-bs-toggle / data-bs-target and closed with a real <button data-bs-dismiss="modal">.
• Before, it was a Bootstrap 2 data-toggle panel (ahide afade classes with an inline display: none) whose Close link called jQuery .hide() and .modal('hide'), and a jQuery toggle("fast") handler showed and hid it. Both scripts are removed.

Template Options screen

• The 39 legacy class="switch" checkboxes are gone. 34 are now Joomla’s native on/off switchers (for example logoLinked, H1TitleImgText, RSSON, usedropdown, cam_turnOn, cam_autoAdvance, vmtsl_auto, useZoom, usetheme), the five that belonged to retired social networks were removed with them, and the eight new social services add eight more: 42 switchers in all.
• Fields 212 → 221, fieldsets 9 → 10 (the new Favicon tab comes first).
• Tab names shortened: “Basic Settings” → “Basic”, “Site Name And Slogan Settings” → “Site Name & Slogan”, “Drop Down Menu Settings” → “Drop Down Menu”, “Template Header And Footer Custom Code” → “Header & Footer Custom Code”, “Built-in Slideshow Settings” → “Built-in Slideshow”, “Product Slider Settings” → “Product Slider”, “Product Images Settings” → “Product Images”, “Theme Settings” → “Theme”.

Fonts and icons

• The Google Fonts WebFontConfig JavaScript loader (webfont.js) is replaced by a direct stylesheet link for Open Sans with preconnect hints and display=swap (WebFontConfig 1 → 0).
• The front end loads Font Awesome 6.5.2 (all.min.css) with v4-shims.min.css from cdnjs, instead of both Font Awesome 5.0.1 (use.fontawesome.com) and Font Awesome 4.6.3 (MaxCDN). The shims keep the template’s and your content’s fa fa-* icons working.

Menus, background and selects without old jQuery plug-ins

• Drop-down menus open on hover through CSS (css/nav.css and the bridge) instead of the Superfish/Supersubs plug-ins. The 2–5 column widths (dropdownhandler2–5) still apply. Because nothing animates the menus any more, Drop Down Speed, the opacity, height and width animation switches, and Min column width (em) no longer change anything.
• The page background image (bodybackgroundimage) is set with a few lines of plain JavaScript and CSS background-size: cover instead of Backstretch.
• The currency picker is a plain HTML select instead of DropKick. At every screen width its text now sits 8 px in from the left, matching the arrow on the right, with room so a long currency name does not run under the arrow.
• jQuery itself still loads, for the slideshow and a few small inline click handlers.

Stylesheets

• css/print.css: its 3 @imports of media/jui/css/bootstrap*.css, files that Joomla 4 removed, are gone.
• css/template.css: the IcoMoon @font-face that pointed at the removed media/jui/fonts/ is switched off (see Fixed).

Fixed

• The slideshow had no visible way to move between slides on a phone or tablet. The arrows only appeared on mouse-over, which a touchscreen never does. On touch screens they are now always shown (@media (hover: none)).
• A stylesheet that does not exist was requested on every page load. index.php loaded css/blog.css, which the template does not ship; the request is gone.
• The colour settings were plain text boxes on Joomla 5: the jscolor loader in the Options screen never ran, so a colour could only be changed by typing its hex code. All 110 now have the colour picker.
• The Options screen requested a script that could not load. It pointed at ../templates/Aeon/utils/admin-js.js, with a capital A that never resolves on a Linux server. The reference and the script are both gone; the native switchers do not need it.
• The template’s Details panel was unreadable in the dark admin theme (grey text with a white shadow). It now follows the selected admin theme.
• Fixes from a maintenance pass across our templates:
  • The @font-face pointing at the removed media/jui/fonts/ IcoMoon font is disabled. It caused four failed requests on every page and a stray character where the search icon should be; .icon-search now draws a Font Awesome magnifier.
  • Pagination arrows (.icon-angle-left / -right / -double-left / -double-right, which Joomla 4 and later emit) showed as empty squares. They now draw Font Awesome arrows.
  • Single-column articles in the Featured Articles view are no longer clipped to their title (.blog-featured .blog-items.columns-1).
  • The search button sits flush with its search box again (#search-position .btn, .mod-finder__search .btn).
  • js/jquery.mobile.customized.min.js, which threw a JavaScript error under Joomla 5’s jQuery on pages with the built-in slideshow, is no longer loaded.
  With thanks to Michael Mullan, whose Expression bug report led to this maintenance pass across our templates.

Removed

Bootstrap 2

• The template’s own Bootstrap 2 folder css/bootstrap/ (7 files: bootstrap.css, bootstrap.min.css, bootstrap-responsive.css, bootstrap-responsive.min.css, bootstrap-extended.css, bootstrap-rtl.css, bootstrap-tooltip-extended.css). The previous download loaded three of them on every page.

Stylesheets and scripts no longer loaded

• Stylesheets: Font Awesome 5.0.1 and 4.6.3, blog.css, and the Internet Explorer files ie.css, ie6.css and ie9-10.css.
• Scripts: superfish.js, supersubs.js, jquery.backstretch.min.js, jquery.dropkick-1.0.0.js, jquery.mobile.customized.min.js, modernizr.js, selectivizr-min.js, plus the remote html5.js (googlecode) and webfont.js. The local files remain in js/ but nothing loads them.
• The inline jQuery.browser shim, the Superfish/Supersubs set-up script, the .dropkick() call and the jQuery.backstretch() call.

Internet Explorer support in the main layout

• The 7 Internet Explorer conditional blocks in index.php: the conditional <html> classes, the lt IE 9 block (html5shiv, selectivizr, modernizr and ie.css), and the IE 6 / IE 7 stylesheets.

Old colour picker and admin script

• utils/js_colourchanger/ (jscolor.js, arrow.gif, cross.gif, hs.png, hv.png), and the colours_handlers field that loaded it with 110 picker set-up lines.
• utils/admin-js.js, a Joomla 3 admin script for the old checkbox switches.

Unused files

• js.zip and html/mod_menu.zip, archives left inside the template folder.

Retired social services

• Five social slots removed with their switches: Google+ (gplus), MySpace, StumbleUpon, Digg, Blogger.

Security

• 161 places where index.php printed a template setting into the page now go through phEsc():
  • 121 colour, size and font values inside the inline <style>.
  • The site name and slogan text and their image sources (H1Title, H2Title, H1Titleimage, H2Titleimage).
  • The theme preset name in its stylesheet link, the slideshow’s minimum height and the background image URL.
  • All 18 social link hrefs (the 13 networks and the five custom links) and the favicon links.
• The header height (topheight) goes through phCssDim().
• External social links open with rel="noopener".

Quickstart Installer

The Quickstart is a complete Joomla 5.4.7 site with VirtueMart 4.6.8 and Aeon installed as the active template, with the demo content.

• It is a standard Joomla installation package (aeon-quickstart-J5.4.7-11.08.2026.zip): unzip it and run Joomla’s own installer, where you create your own administrator account. The previous Quickstart was an Akeeba .jpa archive that needed Akeeba Kickstart.
• Bundled extensions: Joomla 5.4.7, VirtueMart 4.6.8, Akeeba Backup 10.2.1, MCP For J 2.4.0, StageIt 5.7.3, Weblinks 5.1.0, and the legacy Joomla Search package 4.0.0.
• The site templates/ folder holds aeon, cassiopeia and system. VirtueMart’s demo template vmbasic, which the previous Quickstart carried, is gone, along with two menu items in the trash that pointed at a template style that no longer exists.
• VirtueMart’s Klarna payment plugins (klarna, klarnacheckout), which VirtueMart 4 no longer supports and which the previous Quickstart carried, are not included.
• Joomla 5.4’s “What’s New” guided tour (tour 15) no longer starts by itself (autostart = 0). Before, it sent every administrator link to the dashboard on a fresh install.
• The demo’s template style shows X, Facebook and Instagram, with the other networks switched off. The footer copyright reads 2026.
• A clean starting state: article, category, product and other view counts start at 0, the action log is empty, 11 of Joomla’s 16 post-installation messages are switched off (five worth keeping stay on), and the 46 template overrides are marked as reviewed (no “changes found” warning).

Package format

• Standalone template: Aeon now installs as a Joomla package (pkg_aeon-5.4.7.zip, manifest pkg_aeon.xml) that installs and registers the aeon template extension. It declares method="upgrade", so an existing Aeon updates in place, <blockChildUninstall>true</blockChildUninstall>, so the template is removed through the package rather than on its own, and an update server for Joomla’s Update Manager. The previous download was the bare template zip (aeon.zip).
• Quickstart bundle: aeon-quickstart-J5.4.7-11.08.2026.zip, a complete Joomla 5.4.7 install with VirtueMart 4.6.8 and Aeon pre-loaded as the active template.
• The 5.4.7 template folder also carried an internal report file, security-sweep-3f-report.md. Nothing loads it, and it can be deleted.